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If bitcoin were as useful as pundits suggested, we'd be using it by now. 12 years is a long time to validate an idea. The mobile phone was adopted by pretty muc

If bitcoin were as useful as pundits suggested, we'd be using it by now. 12 years is a long time to validate an idea. The mobile phone was adopted by pretty much the entire world in under 7 years.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
oleganza 6y ago
Bitcoin is being used by everyone who held long enough to see over 5x return. Both as savings account, an investment, and a checking account for occasional purchases. It is also being used by all sorts of international freelancers being paid in Bitcoin, although, most of them convert into fiat swiftly to pay bills. So they are not contributing to holding. But Bitcoin is useful for them, as it's a much cheaper and safer way to pay and get paid internationally. Everyone else is a speculator, sitting on their stash, waiting for price to climb up. That's pure speculators/investors, who use Bitcoin to diversify their porfolio of whatever else they got. And as such, Bitcoin is highly useful, as it provides virtually unlimited upside with limited downside.
- cwhiz 6y ago
  The value of Bitcoin as an investment/security ruins the usefulness of Bitcoin as a currency. If Bitcoin were stable enough to be used as a currency, it would ruin the value of Bitcoin as an investment/security. Personally, I don't think most people care about Bitcoin as a currency. There is some sizable percentage of people who bought in the run up to $20k who are just waiting to make their money back.
  - jhoechtl 6y ago
    Bitcoin inherently is unsuitable to ve used as a currency. Transaction fees are to high and the hash rate means waiting for to long for a transactiom to be approved. Imagine standing in the queue at your supermarket waiting for a bitcoin transaction approval.
    - thinkmassive 6y ago
      Sending physical dollars through the mail is also expensive and slow. That’s why there are additional layers built on top of the base layer, like lightning network and RGB.
    - tromp 6y ago
      You'd be using a 2nd layer solution like Lightning for that. Instant and nearly fee-less.
    - sparkie 6y ago
      This is a poor take. Bitcoin can be made almost instant if paying via the Lightning Network. The downside is that you must pre-load some channels with satoshis that you can spend, which involves a bitcoin transaction which may take a few hours/days depending on how much you're willing to pay to have it prioritized. Before you complain that "this is too slow," consider what the equivalent is in the banking world. Imagine you walk into a shop which only takes cards, and you have no bank account. You must go to a bank, talk to a rep, fill out a bunch of paper work, wait for some background checks to be done, then have a card issued to you via snail mail. Now you can go to the shop (days later). Your initial, flawed assumption is that people have already done this and already have a card to pay with. Most people in the developed world have this access now, but it didn't come instantly - it has progressed over about 3 decades. Back in the 90s, if you weren't paying with cash, you would be writing out a cheque in the store and holding up the queue. So when you unravel your assumption, it's actually much faster to acquire some bitcoin and load some payment channels. Just few people have done it yet, and the software for doing it is under heavy development. Give it a decade or so, like we have allowed for payment cards to proliferate, and the assumption will be that people already have some loaded payment channels which are ready to make instant payments. There will be no standing in queues waiting to pay.
      - ghkklj 6y ago
        This is a beautiful response, clear and to the point, perfectly addressing the parent comment... but do you feel like you're making any progress with the explanations? It seems like every bitcoin thread on hacker news endlessly generates nothing but 2013/14 era FUD. I don't see people installing lightning wallets and playing around.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    Yeah, using Bitcoin as a currency is "foolish". Back in the day people bought pizzas with Bitcoin that are worth millions today. If any other currency would behave like Bitcoin it would be considered dead and its associated economy would be in shambles because people hoard the currency instead of doing useful activity with it. Bitcoin is dead as a currency but people holding onto Bitcoin don't care anyway.
  - eternalban 6y ago
    I guess the relevant question today is "would it have been a good idea for a German in Weimar's republic to convert DMarks to BTC in 1930 to protect against the hyperinflation?" What I am looking for is a mechanism to protect againt (imho highly probably future) US Dollar devaluation and potential SHTF political/societal conditions here. The historically time-tested approach (but not practical in USA) was to convert to physical gold that both retained value, was generally accepted by all, and could be easily transported across borders. BTC has the border/security angle covered but the value retention aspect is not clear.
    - cwhiz 6y ago
      In this hypothetical SHFT situation where the USD is worthless... what do you imagine the world looks like? Let's say you bought an ounce of gold today for $1,955 and then the US economy craters and the USD is worthless. What are you going to do with that ounce of gold? Do you really think you'll be able to barter with that gold to get the rough equivalent of $2,000 in 2020 purchasing power? Or in a true SHTF situation will there even be networks available for you to trade Bitcoin? Or servers to continue to mine and process transactions? I doubt it.
      - eternalban 6y ago
        Optimally, one would leave before S truly HTF. In that case, you would have access to your BTC elsewhere. A few decades ago, Gold sewn into clothes served the same purpose. I don't understand your money math there, btw. If 1 oz. of Gold will buy you a say tailored suit before SHTF, historically it will still buy you that suit after SHTF. That's one of the reasons there are Gold bugs (not I) out there. Conversely, your $2000.00 will buy you that suit today, but may only be enough to buy a carton of milk after SHTF.
        cwhiz 6y ago
        >If 1 oz. of Gold will buy you a say tailored suit before SHTF, historically it will still buy you that suit after SHTF. This has never really been tested, especially not after we left the gold standard. The utility value of gold has never been lower. I believe that in a situation where USD is worthless, the real world value of gold would plummet. Let us say shit has truly hit the fan. USD is completely worthless. You have a year of dehydrated food that you bought for $2,000. Would you swap that food for an ounce of gold? Me personally, no fucking way. I think gold is comically overvalued and completely detached from the reality of its worth as a shiny metal. People buy it because you can invest in gold contracts and watch your net worth tick up like it's a video game.
- mr_woozy 6y ago
  >although, most of them convert into fiat swiftly to pay bills. So they are not contributing to holding. I'd argue they're contributing more by transacting in it, helping the overall network ecosystem in general. This provides better utility too.
unalakleet 6y ago
Holding is using. There's a reason people like PTJ and now MicroStrategy just hold it. And a lot of it.
- JoshTko 6y ago
  Who is PTJ and what is MicroStrategy?
  - asselinpaul 6y ago
    - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tudor_Jones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tudor_Jones - https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200811005331/en/MicroStrategy-Adopts-Bitcoin-Primary-Treasury-Reserve-Asset https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200811005331/en/Mic...
- loceng 6y ago
  Holding for greed or risk diversification isn't using in the classical use of the term using - it's using it to mitigate potential risk and/or to earn wealth if society is tricked into using this mechanism that unnecessarily transfers wealth from late adopters to earlier adopters.
  - unalakleet 6y ago
    >using it to mitigate potential risk Sounds like using to me. >earn wealth if society is tricked You might want to read the reasons PTJ and MicroStrategy are holding it.
TigeriusKirk 6y ago
Mobile phones took a couple decades to go from commercially available to widespread usage.
- thefounder 6y ago
  Because they were expensive.
  - jzig 6y ago
    As an interesting counterpoint, my first couple iPhones were only $200 plus a 2 year service contract (for the latest model). Now it's $1000+
    - unalakleet 6y ago
      Early on, people are unconvinced by a nascent innovation, so are willing to pay less. As the network effect grows and the innovation becomes indispensable, they are willing to pay more.
    - thefounder 6y ago
      As far as I'm concerned bitcoin should become valuable as a protocol (i.e http or html protocol) with no direct monetization. I think comparing it with mobile phones is an apple vs oranges situation
    - ac29 6y ago
      At least in the US, phone prices used to be subsidized by the carrier, who passed on the cost as higher monthly prices. The industry almost completely moved away from that now. Verizon, for example, was never buying iPhones from Apple for $200.
- detritus 6y ago
  Phones took literally decades to get to a point where an affordable mass consumer item could sit in a pocket and last long enough to be useful. What's Bitcoin missing in technological or infrastructure terms that's holding it back? I'd wager nothing. For the vast majority of people, Bitcoin doesn't solve anything - in fact, 'is slightly incomprehensible and weird' and so is actvely disuassive of its use.
loceng 6y ago
The playbook is getting the "army if HODLers" large and influential enough where regulatory capture can occur and they together can lead to more adoption, so more of the latest adopters shift to becoming earlier adopters - unnecessarily shifting wealth weighted towards earliest adopters to late adopters - so current late adopters can realize a gain, for doing nothing except. It's a financially incentivized religion and/or Pyramid-Ponzi scheme. I do say there's room for a digital currency on blockchain but not in its current structure that's the incumbent purely for the greed aspect tied into the VC-financial industrial complex.
reportingsjr 6y ago
The core ideas for mobile phone networks (cells of radio towers, switching networks, etc), were explored in the 40s through the 60s and the first mobile phone prototype that kind of matches what we think of was created in the early 70s. Mobile phones didn't gain popularity until the mid 90s, twenty years after the prototype and about 50 (!) years after the first rough tests. Mobile phones didn't gain widespread use until the 2000s even. To say they only took 7 years to be adopted is ridiculous and ignores a ton of work that went it to developing them and making them useful.
- petra 6y ago
  What factors held mobile phones from adoption ?
  - tossAfterUsing 6y ago
    I'm sure there are many, but cellular network coverage (industrial) and products to connect easily to it (consumer) both seem like limiting factors.
  - virgilp 6y ago
    Initially? Size, cost of the hardware, cost of the service, coverage. Size became a non-issue relatively quickly, but it took quite a while for the service to be affordable & have good coverage.
- detritus 6y ago
  I'm thinking OP is conflating smartphone uptake with mobile phones generally, perhaps belying their age...

If bitcoin were as useful as pundits suggested, we'd be using it by now. 12 years is a long time to validate an idea. The mobile phone was adopted by pretty much the entire world in under 7 years.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

oleganza 6y ago

Bitcoin is being used by everyone who held long enough to see over 5x return. Both as savings account, an investment, and a checking account for occasional purchases. It is also being used by all sorts of international freelancers being paid in Bitcoin, although, most of them convert into fiat swiftly to pay bills. So they are not contributing to holding. But Bitcoin is useful for them, as it's a much cheaper and safer way to pay and get paid internationally. Everyone else is a speculator, sitting on their stash, waiting for price to climb up. That's pure speculators/investors, who use Bitcoin to diversify their porfolio of whatever else they got. And as such, Bitcoin is highly useful, as it provides virtually unlimited upside with limited downside.

cwhiz 6y ago
The value of Bitcoin as an investment/security ruins the usefulness of Bitcoin as a currency. If Bitcoin were stable enough to be used as a currency, it would ruin the value of Bitcoin as an investment/security. Personally, I don't think most people care about Bitcoin as a currency. There is some sizable percentage of people who bought in the run up to $20k who are just waiting to make their money back.
- jhoechtl 6y ago
  Bitcoin inherently is unsuitable to ve used as a currency. Transaction fees are to high and the hash rate means waiting for to long for a transactiom to be approved. Imagine standing in the queue at your supermarket waiting for a bitcoin transaction approval.
  - thinkmassive 6y ago
    Sending physical dollars through the mail is also expensive and slow. That’s why there are additional layers built on top of the base layer, like lightning network and RGB.
  - tromp 6y ago
    You'd be using a 2nd layer solution like Lightning for that. Instant and nearly fee-less.
  - sparkie 6y ago
    This is a poor take. Bitcoin can be made almost instant if paying via the Lightning Network. The downside is that you must pre-load some channels with satoshis that you can spend, which involves a bitcoin transaction which may take a few hours/days depending on how much you're willing to pay to have it prioritized. Before you complain that "this is too slow," consider what the equivalent is in the banking world. Imagine you walk into a shop which only takes cards, and you have no bank account. You must go to a bank, talk to a rep, fill out a bunch of paper work, wait for some background checks to be done, then have a card issued to you via snail mail. Now you can go to the shop (days later). Your initial, flawed assumption is that people have already done this and already have a card to pay with. Most people in the developed world have this access now, but it didn't come instantly - it has progressed over about 3 decades. Back in the 90s, if you weren't paying with cash, you would be writing out a cheque in the store and holding up the queue. So when you unravel your assumption, it's actually much faster to acquire some bitcoin and load some payment channels. Just few people have done it yet, and the software for doing it is under heavy development. Give it a decade or so, like we have allowed for payment cards to proliferate, and the assumption will be that people already have some loaded payment channels which are ready to make instant payments. There will be no standing in queues waiting to pay.
    - ghkklj 6y ago
      This is a beautiful response, clear and to the point, perfectly addressing the parent comment... but do you feel like you're making any progress with the explanations? It seems like every bitcoin thread on hacker news endlessly generates nothing but 2013/14 era FUD. I don't see people installing lightning wallets and playing around.
- imtringued 6y ago
  Yeah, using Bitcoin as a currency is "foolish". Back in the day people bought pizzas with Bitcoin that are worth millions today. If any other currency would behave like Bitcoin it would be considered dead and its associated economy would be in shambles because people hoard the currency instead of doing useful activity with it. Bitcoin is dead as a currency but people holding onto Bitcoin don't care anyway.
- eternalban 6y ago
  I guess the relevant question today is "would it have been a good idea for a German in Weimar's republic to convert DMarks to BTC in 1930 to protect against the hyperinflation?" What I am looking for is a mechanism to protect againt (imho highly probably future) US Dollar devaluation and potential SHTF political/societal conditions here. The historically time-tested approach (but not practical in USA) was to convert to physical gold that both retained value, was generally accepted by all, and could be easily transported across borders. BTC has the border/security angle covered but the value retention aspect is not clear.
  - cwhiz 6y ago
    In this hypothetical SHFT situation where the USD is worthless... what do you imagine the world looks like? Let's say you bought an ounce of gold today for $1,955 and then the US economy craters and the USD is worthless. What are you going to do with that ounce of gold? Do you really think you'll be able to barter with that gold to get the rough equivalent of $2,000 in 2020 purchasing power? Or in a true SHTF situation will there even be networks available for you to trade Bitcoin? Or servers to continue to mine and process transactions? I doubt it.
    - eternalban 6y ago
      Optimally, one would leave before S truly HTF. In that case, you would have access to your BTC elsewhere. A few decades ago, Gold sewn into clothes served the same purpose. I don't understand your money math there, btw. If 1 oz. of Gold will buy you a say tailored suit before SHTF, historically it will still buy you that suit after SHTF. That's one of the reasons there are Gold bugs (not I) out there. Conversely, your $2000.00 will buy you that suit today, but may only be enough to buy a carton of milk after SHTF.
      - cwhiz 6y ago
        >If 1 oz. of Gold will buy you a say tailored suit before SHTF, historically it will still buy you that suit after SHTF. This has never really been tested, especially not after we left the gold standard. The utility value of gold has never been lower. I believe that in a situation where USD is worthless, the real world value of gold would plummet. Let us say shit has truly hit the fan. USD is completely worthless. You have a year of dehydrated food that you bought for $2,000. Would you swap that food for an ounce of gold? Me personally, no fucking way. I think gold is comically overvalued and completely detached from the reality of its worth as a shiny metal. People buy it because you can invest in gold contracts and watch your net worth tick up like it's a video game.
mr_woozy 6y ago
>although, most of them convert into fiat swiftly to pay bills. So they are not contributing to holding. I'd argue they're contributing more by transacting in it, helping the overall network ecosystem in general. This provides better utility too.

unalakleet 6y ago

Holding is using. There's a reason people like PTJ and now MicroStrategy just hold it. And a lot of it.

JoshTko 6y ago
Who is PTJ and what is MicroStrategy?
- asselinpaul 6y ago
  - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tudor_Jones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tudor_Jones - https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200811005331/en/MicroStrategy-Adopts-Bitcoin-Primary-Treasury-Reserve-Asset https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200811005331/en/Mic...
loceng 6y ago
Holding for greed or risk diversification isn't using in the classical use of the term using - it's using it to mitigate potential risk and/or to earn wealth if society is tricked into using this mechanism that unnecessarily transfers wealth from late adopters to earlier adopters.
- unalakleet 6y ago
  >using it to mitigate potential risk Sounds like using to me. >earn wealth if society is tricked You might want to read the reasons PTJ and MicroStrategy are holding it.

TigeriusKirk 6y ago

Mobile phones took a couple decades to go from commercially available to widespread usage.

thefounder 6y ago
Because they were expensive.
- jzig 6y ago
  As an interesting counterpoint, my first couple iPhones were only $200 plus a 2 year service contract (for the latest model). Now it's $1000+
  - unalakleet 6y ago
    Early on, people are unconvinced by a nascent innovation, so are willing to pay less. As the network effect grows and the innovation becomes indispensable, they are willing to pay more.
  - thefounder 6y ago
    As far as I'm concerned bitcoin should become valuable as a protocol (i.e http or html protocol) with no direct monetization. I think comparing it with mobile phones is an apple vs oranges situation
  - ac29 6y ago
    At least in the US, phone prices used to be subsidized by the carrier, who passed on the cost as higher monthly prices. The industry almost completely moved away from that now. Verizon, for example, was never buying iPhones from Apple for $200.
detritus 6y ago
Phones took literally decades to get to a point where an affordable mass consumer item could sit in a pocket and last long enough to be useful. What's Bitcoin missing in technological or infrastructure terms that's holding it back? I'd wager nothing. For the vast majority of people, Bitcoin doesn't solve anything - in fact, 'is slightly incomprehensible and weird' and so is actvely disuassive of its use.

loceng 6y ago

The playbook is getting the "army if HODLers" large and influential enough where regulatory capture can occur and they together can lead to more adoption, so more of the latest adopters shift to becoming earlier adopters - unnecessarily shifting wealth weighted towards earliest adopters to late adopters - so current late adopters can realize a gain, for doing nothing except. It's a financially incentivized religion and/or Pyramid-Ponzi scheme. I do say there's room for a digital currency on blockchain but not in its current structure that's the incumbent purely for the greed aspect tied into the VC-financial industrial complex.

reportingsjr 6y ago

The core ideas for mobile phone networks (cells of radio towers, switching networks, etc), were explored in the 40s through the 60s and the first mobile phone prototype that kind of matches what we think of was created in the early 70s. Mobile phones didn't gain popularity until the mid 90s, twenty years after the prototype and about 50 (!) years after the first rough tests. Mobile phones didn't gain widespread use until the 2000s even. To say they only took 7 years to be adopted is ridiculous and ignores a ton of work that went it to developing them and making them useful.

petra 6y ago
What factors held mobile phones from adoption ?
- tossAfterUsing 6y ago
  I'm sure there are many, but cellular network coverage (industrial) and products to connect easily to it (consumer) both seem like limiting factors.
- virgilp 6y ago
  Initially? Size, cost of the hardware, cost of the service, coverage. Size became a non-issue relatively quickly, but it took quite a while for the service to be affordable & have good coverage.
detritus 6y ago
I'm thinking OP is conflating smartphone uptake with mobile phones generally, perhaps belying their age...